By the time Jane calmed down, her satin pillow was stained with the mascara that was supposed to be waterproof. Apparently, a never ending stream of tears and having her face buried in her pillow voided that label. The fact that her chest had stopped heaving and she could open her eyes without wetting her cheeks was enough to distract her from the ruined pillowcase. This issue, what had just happened between her friends, wasn't a problem that she could move on from after an emotional breakdown, though. This wasn't her dad refusing to let her skip school for a trip to Bali, this wasn't even at the level of her father marrying Nicole. Sienna, Sydney and Piper were the girls that she loved like sisters and when she hated her own family, she had them to turn to. What was going to happen to that now? Sienna and Sydney's differences seemed irreconcilable. Sydney slept with Vincent, the boy that they all knew Sienna had loved forever, and apparently, Sienna had slandered Sydney on social media. It was never stated in the fight that it was Sienna who did it, or at least Jane hadn't heard that being snapped during the heated conversation, but it seemed obvious. There was no way that that post would come out minutes before Sienna confronted Sydney about the same thing without there being a common link.
Jane couldn't imagine picking a side between her two best friends. The reason for Sienna's anger was obvious and valid. Vincent was hers and it completely destroyed their girl code for Sydney to go after him. At the same time, everyone knew how much Sydney's public image meant to her. She had spent years building it up and taking her position at the top, and Sienna had just, at the very least, threatened that. Sienna knew how Sydney worked just as well as Jane did, and confronting Sydney at dinner probably would have been enough. Did she had to make that post too? Probably not. However, Jane couldn't blame Sienna for not being as complicit to Sydney's outrageous demands and expectations as she was. Sienna was too independent to be forced to quell her feelings, especially about Vincent - something she was so passionate about, just to appease Sydney. So, there Jane was, stuck between understanding both sides of the dilemma but unable to choose one over the other.
As if all of that wasn't enough, Jane had to face her own problems being out in the open now, too. It had been shocking to hear Sydney reference the facility she had spent her summer at, because even if they were skeptical of her whereabouts, how would they know that she was there? Out of every place in the world that she could have been staying at, how did they figure out that it was that place?! It baffled Jane, who was sure that she had done a good enough job at covering her disorder's tracks for the past few years, and even the past few months when it had taken on a life of its own.
The only people who she could think to blame this on were Nicole, or Hailey. Hailey Neilson had seen her at the airport in Chicago when they were both flying back to New York. Simply being at an airport thirty minutes from the facility wouldn't have given someone enough reason to magically guess she had been there, but maybe Hailey overheard the facility employee who dropped her off referencing it? It wasn't a very plausible scenario but Jane had to consider it. She wanted someone to blame this on, and she wanted that person to be someone who wouldn't go crying to her dad if she accused them of it. If it was Hailey, that still didn't excuse Sydney from how rash she had treated the subject, or Sienna, for apparently organizing that dinner with the intentions of grilling Jane on it. Sienna's text directly following the dinner had suggested that maybe it wasn't the cynical plan that she felt like Sydney had painted it to be, but Jane was at a point where she didn't know who to trust. She was used to both of them venting to her about the other, and it wouldn't have been too surprising if each tried to make the other seem bad to make themselves look better.
It was stressing Jane out enough that she didn't want to be friends with either of the girls if this was how it was going to be. An unrealistic choice for someone who relied so heavily on socialization, but one that she supposed she could stick to for at least the night. Besides, she always had Sebastian, and that was evident in his text to her. Normally, she would have begged him to come over so she could sob to him about the drama that just went down, but what if he knew about her disorder as well? Maybe he knew for just as long as the girls did, and was waiting to spring it on her at any moment too. Even if he didn't know already, how was she going to explain how exhausting the night was without referencing that? Sydney and Sienna drama was normal, even if it wasn't to this degree, and her reaction had been too emotional for this just to be about them. Jane wasn't ready to talk to Sebastian about her problems. Not because she didn't trust him, but only because she wasn't ready to talk to anyone, including Syd and Sia, about them.
To: Seb
Just please make them be friends again Seb
She needed to distract herself and the list of assignments that Charlotte reminded her of seemed like a good start. It took a bit of effort, but Jane eventually pulled her thick blankets away from her small frame and shuffled over to her desk. It was buried in the back of one of the drawers, but she eventually pulled out Othello. It had been one of the book choices for summer reading, and though she never remembered choosing it, it was apparently the one she selected. All she had to do was flip the cover open to decide that there was no way she could read that. She knew what Rodrigo meant, but she couldn't figure out that "Iago" was a name and not some unknown word, and that alone was a bad sign. She felt bad bugging Charlotte again, especially since she planned on requesting a copy of another assignment from her tomorrow, so Jane took the book out of her room and to Nicole. It probably wasn't the best person to request homework help from. Jane was the first person to point out how dumb she found Nicole to be, but she also assumed that maybe her unwelcome sister would know a thing or two about it. Nicole was standing in Carolina's doorway, and still unwilling and unsure of how to even approach Carolina, she turned to Nicole and held the book out. "Can you help me learn this?" She was trying to be nice because Jane knew that she needed the help and wasn't going to get it with an attitude. Plus, she really had dealt with enough fighting for the day with her friends.